


On This Day

by embulalia



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, It's short and simple so i'm not really sure what tags i should slap on it haha, Sibling Bonding, just some bros being sad and helping each other out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 19:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8298118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embulalia/pseuds/embulalia
Summary: Ford dragged himself up the stairs in the back of the pawn shop on shaking legs, his knees threatening to buckle.
The answer to a call to action from pinesinthewoods on tumblr.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinesinthewoods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinesinthewoods/gifts).



Ford dragged himself up the stairs in the back of the pawn shop on shaking legs, his knees threatening to buckle. His father was engaged in fevered price negotiation with a prospective customer and paid no mind to his arrival. On other days, that might have stung a little. On this day, it was what he had been hoping for.

The staircase had never felt so tall before. He sloughed his tattered schoolbag as soon as he reached the top, letting it fall to the ground with an unceremonious thud. A few papers scattered across the floor. He didn’t care. 

His mother was engaged in fevered passive aggression with a prospective customer. She briefly raised a hand in greeting to her son without looking up. He swallowed. On other days, that might have stung a little. On this day, it stung a lot. 

He wandered idly to the kitchen, his shaking legs beginning to feel numb. He fumbled around in the freezer for a moment before pulling out a bag of frozen peas. He held it to his face, dislodging his stupid glasses and pushing them up onto his forehead. 

There was no lock on the twins’ bedroom door, so Ford made do by wedging his desk chair under the handle. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard a voice scolding him about how that was a fire hazard. He decided he wanted privacy more than he wanted an escape route and sank down onto the rumpled sheets of Stan’s bed. 

Stan was out on a date, wouldn’t be home for a few hours. On other days, that might have stung a little. On this day, it made Ford’s stomach twist with dread and jealousy. Stan was the only person he had any desire to see, but Stan had plenty of others he’d rather hang around. Ford wondered if it was nice, having friends like that. 

He kicked off his shoes, revelling in the thud they made against the wall of his room. Then, he sank down against his brother’s mattress, yanking his glasses off and tossing them onto the bedside table. The bag of peas was cold and damp against his skin, soothing the unpleasant heat of his swelling flesh. He would bruise, that much was certain. Hopefully, the black eye would be one of those ones that just looked like a particularly pronounced dark circle, rather than one of the gruesome ones that made it look like he was wearing half of a raccoon’s mask. He didn’t like the snickers that tended to accompany the latter.

He tried to focus on his breathing, but all he could feel was the aching in his face and the heavy, thick dread coiling in his gut. He wasn’t sure why it was so much worse than usual this time. Perhaps it was the particularly vicious words lobbed his way this time, the ones that went a few steps beyond the typical “freak” and “six-fingered weirdo” into the less-touched territories of his too large nose or his too thick glasses or his too scrawny body or his too pudgy face. Perhaps it was the fact that Stan wasn’t here to clap him on the back and tell him that they were all just idiots, jealous of his awesome brother’s smarts, and was instead off having the time of his life with Carla “Hotpants” McCorkle. Perhaps it was the fact that he had just been having a bad day in general, even before those assholes cornered him, as he’d left his paper for English on his desk and dropped his lunch in the cafeteria and tripped on the stairs to the school and wound up stuck in detention for accidentally taking down that teacher when he fell. 

What time was it? Probably getting well into the evening by that point. Despite his exhaustion, Ford hadn’t been willing to come straight home in case his father wasn’t caught up in negotiations when he came through the door. He instead had found a nice spot by the beach to sit and stew. That had been his fatal error, as the assholes found him there and made sure to remind him that things always had a way of getting worse when he really thought they couldn’t.

What was it his mother had always told him? Count while you breathe? Ford would usually discredit her advice, as she made a living out of making up bullshit like that. But what was the harm in trying it just this once? 

Ford closed the eye not covered by his peas and focused on breathing. 

He had counted to 618 when he heard the doorknob twist. It was followed by an exasperated grunt, a lot of shoving, and then a loud thud. Then quiet. 

Then, a creaky, thin voice. “Ford, open the door, wouldya?”

Ford slowly sat up, his back cracking once or twice. He recognized that sound in Stan’s tone, although he hadn’t heard it for a while. He pulled himself to his feet and hurried across the room, pulling the chair aside. 

Stan’s face was red and blotchy when Ford opened the door. He wore an expression of pure, dejected sadness, one only made more pathetic by the faint tremble of his lip. 

“Aw shit, Sixer...” Stan said with a hard swallow, trying to pull himself together enough to play supportive brother. “What happened to your face?”

On other days, that would have made him feel a little better. On this day, it felt like a punch to the gut. 

“Stanley, forget my face,” Ford said, appalled by the fact that Stan thought he would have to do that in an emergency situation like this. “What happened? Are you... Are you going to--”

“Can it, Sixer,” Stan hissed, and he looked down at his shoes in a futile hope of hiding the tears that had welled in his eyes. “Can you just...” Stan paused, swallowing hard again. “Can you just let me into our room...?” The last word was cleaved in two by a sharp voice crack. 

Ford dropped the bag of peas, which hit the floor with a strange, wet plop. He gently grasped his brother’s arm and pulled him in, shutting the door behind him. He was going to push the chair back into place, but he didn’t have a chance, as he was instantly pulled into a vicelike hug. Stan melted into tears the moment Ford returned the squeeze.

“C-Carla,” Stan wheezed, wetting Ford’s shirt with snot. “She... she left me f-for some HIPPIE...”

Ford gently rubbed Stan’s back as it heaved with small sobs. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Stan cry like this. Sure, he got teary at sad movies and the occasional sappy news article, but this... 

“I-I don’t understand, I thought it was g-going so well!” Stan moaned, the words muffled in his brother’s shoulder. “W-What did I do...?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Ford said softly, squeezing his brother firmly. “You were great...” He had never trusted that Carla. And he had never before related so deeply to his father’s distaste for hippies. 

His reassurances didn’t seem to be doing much good. He swallowed hard, trying to think of something better to say. Emotional talk had never been his forte, and he cursed himself for that as his shirt got more and more damp.

So he simply squeezed harder, rubbing his twin’s back in slow, rhythmic circles. “’S okay... Deep breaths...” he murmured, parroting the phrases his mother used to say to him when he was a kid and came home in tears. “Deep breaths... Deep breaths...”

He made a few attempts, but they were shuddering and patchy. Unusure of what else to do, Ford started taking slow, rhythmic breaths himself. Stan’s hiccoughs and whimpers didn’t cease, but Ford could feel him attempting to follow along. Ford counted for him. 

It took 186 breaths for Stan’s sobs to fully subside, his body going slack and his breaths turning to little, weak hitches. Ford gently pushed him down so he was sitting on the bed and then went to their washroom, retrieving a glass of water and a damp cloth. He lightly kicked the thawing bag of peas aside on his way back into the room. 

Stan looked tired. His face was even blotchier than it had been before, and his eyes were red and puffy. Ford sat beside him and gently pressed the cloth to his skin. Stan sighed softly and took it from him, slowly mopping up his own face. 

“The coolness should help you feel a bit better,” Ford said, wanting to fill the silence somehow. “The increased bloodflow to your skin can make you feel hot and uncomfortable.”

“Shut up, Poindexter,” Stan mumbled. When he pulled the cloth away from his face, Ford handed him the glass. He downed half of it in one long swig. 

“Crying can dehydrate you pretty quickly,” Ford offered, “Which is why having a drink of water can make you feel better.”

Stan filled his voice with flimsy anger to hide the smirk tugging at his lips. “I said shut up, no one cares about stuff like that,” he said, the smirk leaking into his tone. Ford smiled. 

Stan held the glass of water in both hands. They trembled, but only slightly. Ford clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, trying to think of something else he could do to soothe his brother. 

“Stanley,” Ford said eventually, his voice quiet and soft, “You didn’t do anything wrong. She was just a terrible person.”

Stan winced a little. “Thanks, Ford, but I... don’t really... want to talk about it right now...” He took another long swig of water.

Ford nodded, looking down at the floor. The peas had left a damp spot on the carpet. “Sorry.”

“Your face okay?” Stan asked quietly. Ford frowned, then remembered the blow he had taken and the bruise that must already be blooming over his eye. He had completely forgotten about it.

“Yeah,” he said, blinking. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had before. “Yeah, it’s fine. It was nothing.” 

Stan fell silent. After a moment, he inched a little bit closer to Ford, just enough for them to be brushing against each other. Just enough to know that they were both there, that they had each other. Neither of them spoke. 

On other days, that might not have been enough.

On this day, it was all either of them needed.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written without plan really fast when I probably should have been doing any number of other things, not least of which was sleeping. But when someone calls for hurt/comfort, I struggle to resist.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!!


End file.
